JONATHAN EDWARDS in the TWENTIETH CENTURY Kenneth P
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JETS 47/4 (December 2004) 659–87 JONATHAN EDWARDS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY kenneth p. minkema* It is hard to imagine that anyone interested in Jonathan Edwards, the great eighteenth-century American theologian, revivalist, and missionary, did not know that 2003 was the 300th anniversary of his birth. This milestone was marked by numerous commemorative conferences, symposia, lecture series, and other events across the country, accompanied by a wealth of pub- lications, including scholarly and popular monographs, special editions of Edwards’s writings, collected essays, reference works, commemorative cat- alogues, and a magisterial biography.1 However, scholars of Edwards are not unaccustomed to large and diverse amounts of publications on him; indeed, they are spoiled, or glutted, depending on your point of view. The surge in Edwards studies over the past generation has been referred to as a “renais- sance” that shows no signs of abating. But the road to that renaissance has been long and circuitous, and is itself a source of some fascination. This article examines interpretation and appraisal of Edwards primarily within the “academy” over the twentieth century. The “academy” is identified with the rise of professional scholarship as a cultural and class phenomenon and with the modern research university as it emerged in the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I also include under this rubric * Kenneth Minkema is executive editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. 1 Monographs include Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Stephen Nichols, An Absolute Sort of Certainty: The Holy Spirit and the Apologetics of Jonathan Edwards (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2003); Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Amy Plantinga Pauw, The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Douglas A. Sweeney, Nathaniel William Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). For selected writings by Ed- wards, see Richard Bailey and Gregory Wills, eds., The Salvation of Souls: Nine Previously Un- published Sermons on the Call of Ministry and the Gospel by Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003); and Michael McMullen, ed., The Blessing of God: Previously Unpublished Ser- mons by Jonathan Edwards (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003). Collected essays can be found in Paul Helm and Oliver Crisp, eds., Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (London: Ash- gate, 2003); and Sang Hyun Lee, ed., A Companion to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming). For a reference work, see M. X. Lesser, comp., The Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, forthcoming). A commemorative catalogue is Jonathan Edwards Tercentennial Exhibition: Selected Objects from the Yale Collection (New Haven: Yale University, 2003). The latest biography is George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 660 journal of the evangelical theological society theological schools and seminaries, many of which predated the advent of the modern “academy” but which, to a greater or lesser degree, have adopted its standards. As such, pastors and other religious writers, products and asso- ciates of these theological institutions, also figure here. We can locate the beginning of the appraisal of Edwards within this professional academic culture, thus broadly defined, with the first dissertation done on Edwards in 1899 at the University of Halle, followed closely by the first American dis- sertation on Edwards written in 1904 at Boston University.2 Table 1 tracks commentary and secondary works on Edwards over the twentieth century. I have registered items devoted wholly or in part to Ed- wards: books, articles, book chapters or respectable portions thereof, intro- ductions to edited materials, pamphlets, and dissertations; I have excluded book reviews, entries in reference works, newspaper articles, passing refer- ences, and reprinted works (though I do digress to take notice of reprints at a couple of points in the discussion below). Some items are category-busters because of their range; in cases like this, I have had to look at factors such as the writer’s discipline, or department, or the place of publication, along with other criteria, before assigning a designation. Table 2 breaks out disserta- tions on Edwards, and utilizes the same categories in order to allow for com- parison with Table 1.3 First, I shall unpack some of the information in these tables, then briefly discuss some current topics in Edwards studies, and finish with a reflection on the relationship of the academy and the church in this endeavor. i. general observations From the beginning of the century through the 1930s, the rate of schol- arship on Edwards was, frankly, pitiful. These were the decades of the Pro- gressive Era, the Jazz Age, and the Scopes trial, when the stock of things Puritan and Edwardsean was about as low as it has ever been. One writer in 1918 stated that Edwards “believed in the worst God, preached the worst sermons, and had the worst religion of any human being who ever lived on this continent.”4 What is more, no one emerged to gainsay this estimation. Edwards was set up as the straw man of repression and snobbery, a medieval relic that had no place in modern America. Culturally, figures such as H. L. 2 John Henry McCracken, “Jonathan Edwards Idealismus” (Ph.D. diss., University of Halle, 1899); Clement Elton Holmes, “The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards and Its Relation to His The- ology” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1904). 3 Sources include M. X. Lesser, Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981); idem., Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979–1993 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994); Sean Michael Lucas, “Jonathan Edwards Between Church and Academy: A Bibliographical Essay,” in D. G. Hart et al., eds., The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards: American Religion and the Evangelical Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003) 228–48; America: History and Life Online; ATLA Religion Database; UMI Digital Dissertations; WorldCat; and the The Works of Jonathan Edwards archive, Yale Divinity School. 4 Marilla M. Ricker, Jonathan Edwards: The Divine Who Filled the Air with Damnation and Proved the Total Depravity of God (New York: American Freethought Tract Society, 1918). jonathan edwards in the twentieth century 661 Table 1. Secondary Literature on Jonathan Edwards, 1901–2000a Homiletics Revivalism/ Great Awakening Missiology Ethics/ Aesthetics Literature/ Cultural Criticism Philosophy/ Psychology History/ Biography Theology 1901–10 5 7 --214 4 9 (n=41) (12.2%) (17.0) (4.9) (34.1) (9.8) (22.0) 1911–20 1 1 --44 5 7 (n=22) (4.5%) (4.5) (18.2) (18.2) (22.8) (31.8) 1921–30 4 4 --14 10 5 (n=28) (14.3%) (14.3) (3.6) (14.3) (35.7) (17.8) 1931–40 4 4 --914 10 13 (n=54) (7.4%) (7.4) (16.7) (25.9) (18.5) (24.1) 1941–50 2 4 5 3 3 11 9 11 (n=48) (4.2%) (8.3) (10.4) (6.3) (6.3) (22.9) (18.7) (22.9) 1951–60 9 10 1 3 5 20 14 16 (n=78) (11.5%) (12.8) (1.3) (3.8) (6.4) (25.7) (18.0) (20.5) 1961–70 1 11 4 6 31 36 29 34 (n=152) (0.7%) (7.2) (2.6) (3.9) (20.4) (23.7) (19.1) (22.4) 1971–80 6 23 2 9 42 40 64 55 (n=241) (2.5%) (9.6) (0.8) (3.7) (17.4) (16.6) (26.6) (22.8) 1981–90 9 10 9 26 46 41 81 69 (n=291) (3.1%) (3.5) (3.1) (8.9) (15.8) (14.1) (27.8) (23.7) 1991–2000b 16 20 12 15 37 36 101 116 (n=353) (4.5%) (5.7) (3.4) (4.2) (10.5) (10.2) (28.6) (32.9) a Includes books, articles, book chapters (or portions of at least 5 pp.), introductions to primary materials, pamphlets, and dissertations (see Table 2). Excludes book reviews, reprints, dictionary/ encyclopedia entries, newspaper articles, and passing references. b Incomplete data for this decade. Mencken and Clarence Darrow vied against superstition and ignorance as personified in the pious hypocrisy of Puritanism. Academically, it was the Calvinist-denigrating work of Vernon Parrington that prevailed, in which Edwards was an “anachronism.”5 However, a change was in the wind even in the 1920s as Harvard historians Kenneth Murdock and Samuel Eliot 5 Clarence Darrow, “The Edwardses and the Jukeses,” American Mercury 6 (Oct. 1925) 147–57; Vernon Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, vol. 1, The Colonial Mind, 1620–1800 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1927) 148–63. 662 journal of the evangelical theological society Table 2. Dissertations on Jonathan Edwards, 1890–2000 Homiletics Revivalism/ Great Awakening Missiology Ethics/ Aesthetics Literature/ Cultural Criticism Philosophy/ Psychology History/ Biography Theology 1890–1900 -----1-- (n=1) 1901–10 ---1-2-- (n=3) 1911–20 ------12 (n=3) 1921–30 ------12 (n=3) 1931–40 1- - - 1225 (n=11) 1941–50 ---1-335 (n=12) 1951–60 32- 12544 (n=20) 1961–70 121651059 (n=39) 1971–80 - 1 - - 13151515 (n=59) 1981–90 54161072012 (n=65) 1991–2000* 24365121325 (n=70) Sources: M. X. Lesser, Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981); idem., Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979–1993 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994); Sean Michael Lucas, “Jonathan Edwards Between Church and Academy: A Bibliographical Es- say,” in D.